Why does this always happen. Aircraft accident occurs and within 30 seconds everyone and his dog knows or thinks they know what went wrong. The UK has the AAIB and other countries their equivilent. In my time in the UK I only ever heard praise for the AAIB. Heres a suggestion, why dont we let the professionals do the thorough, scientific and independant investigation that they are world renowned for !!!
It is the "sound bite TV" culture that we live in nowadays. It shouldn't come as any sort of surprise any more. The majority of families now have 200 channels of non stop "entertainment" being pumped via satellite or cable into their 42 inch plasma screen TV's anytime they want to watch, 24 hours a day. If there is an incident at Heathrow, channel 501 and the next 29 channels will cover it non stop as "breaking news" until it becomes stale, or better
breaking news breaks ! Then it will be repeated as a segment every 30 minutes in an ever declining sequence order, until the next day it drops off the list. Everybody wants to know "What happened" ? "Experts" (an aviation journalist, a retired pilot and somebody who was once in the headlines themselves for something quite unrelated) will be wheeled into the studios to state quite categorically that, "
it is far too early to tell what actually happened and it is the job of the investigators to eventually determine the cause,
however blah blah blah..... for the next 5 minutes ! Eyewitnesses are then paraded in front of the cameras to give their take on what happened. Breathless quasi-eyewitnesses are then passed through from the switchboard to the studio to be told to turn their television down (and the recorder on presumably) as the feedback is distorting the transmission, in order to say what thay didn't quite see after they had heard the bang or other loud noise. Then to give their take on what might have been the cause.
News is entertainment. We are its consumers. When something like this happens we all
tut tut at the shallow superficiality of it all, but we still tune in to watch. The real investigation might take months or years to determine the cause. When it eventually does it
might even be worthy of a brief 30 second mention on those news channels if time and other
breaking news commitments permit. The truth is from a news point of view, it is yesterdays news and most people have either forgotten or don't want to know anymore.
These days it is often the case that, whether we have a vested interest, morbid curiosity or no idea at all, we expect to watch our wars as transmitted "flashes" from a suite balcony at the nearby Hilton hotel. Authenticity is a
celebrity reporter in a flak jacket and helmet, reading to a mobile phone camera. This, alternating with their other commitments in the studio, or taking part in some "reality TV competition or talent show". We want to know by the end of the day why an aircraft crashed. If we don't actually know, we expect the eyewitnesses and on-call experts to have provided enough pulp and roughage to have digested the likely (spoon fed) cause in our own mind.
News is no longer simply reporting an event. It is about providing opinion and delivering it as entertainment. The newspapers then have their turn the following morning, their lateness compensated by the fact they can pick the best of the previous days photos to use on their front page. This news media entertainment has been evolving for decades and cannot possibly surprise anybody anymore !
For the participants in these events the realities are normally much less superficial. There are months and years of the real problems that often associate with any serious trauma. Stress, Stress
disorders, changes to routine, changes in the behaviour of family and friends, changes in lifestyle, threat of uncertainty, threat to security, boredom, feelings of guilt, feelings of despair, feelings of anger. These are just a few of the many serious and often debillitating aspects of a trauma that can affect an individual for months or years after the adrenalin has worn off. Perhaps it is understandable why some victims turn to the media when the media is popularly perceived as coming up with answers within a single day ? What isn't so understandable is why those who should have a duty of responsibility and care (including the CEO of a company) would choose or allow the obviously shocked participants to be publically paraded in front of the media within hours of a such a serious incident occuring ? Maybe that particular "buck" didn't stop here !